The present disclosure relates to techniques for acquiring an image and extracting textual information from the acquired image. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to a technique for acquiring an image based on visual suitability indicators and extracting the textual information using optical character recognition.
The widespread availability of digital cameras and cellular telephones with integrated imaging sensors has led to a significant increase in digital photography and associated applications that use information from the acquired images. For example, after a user captures an image of a document (such as a financial document) using a digital camera or a cellular telephone, an application executing on the electronic device (such as a financial application) can extract information from the image using optical character recognition. Then, at least in principle, the financial application can use the extracted information to populate fields in a form or to perform a financial calculation.
However, in practice, the ability to extract useful information from an image (especially for use with an application) is often restricted by the image quality. For example, depending on the image quality, errors may occur when extracting the information using optical character recognition. These errors can make it more difficult, if not impossible, for an application to subsequently use the extracted information.
Consequently, after acquiring an image, the user may need to perform post-acquisition operations, such as: editing the image to crop the area of interest; correcting any errors that occurred in the extracted information; and, if the image is blurry or the area of interest was not captured, repeating the image-capture and/or post-acquisition operations one or more times. Performing the image-capture and/or post-acquisition operations once, let alone multiple times, is time-consuming and may consequently limit the willingness of users to acquire images or to use applications that leverage the information in images.